Tuesday 9 February 2016

The Cup that Cheers–Finished Project

I have now finished my journal page on the theme of tea.

42 Finished Page

This is the previous photo I took, after applying the painted teabags to the page:

40 Teabags Applied to Page

Having the chance to think about it a bit, I thought it needed a few finishing touches, such as darkening the edges of the pages, and adding a bit of shadow here and there to emphasise the elements against the background.

I used my Inktense pencils to add some shadow around the teabags, and a little around the tea cup. I also felt that the text pieces were too bright, so I added a bit more colour with the Inktense pencils, and then darkened them down a bit with a dark grey one.

I went around the border with my sepia pen, adding some small circles and ovals, and then went over them with an Inktense pencil in a dark redding-brown colour, blending it out with water.

41 Finishing Touches

I think these touches bring the design together and give it a bit more coherence. Here is the finished result.

42 Finished Page

To recap, this project uses teabags and real tea, applied onto a background painted with acrylics. I created the “Tea” text using real tea from the teabags, embedded in acrylic polymer and cut to size, and then applied with gel medium. The teabags were layered and inked, and the tea branch was painted with acrylics. I added copper and gold machine embroidery to the teabags and then applied them to the page using gel medium. The water droplets were stamped using archival ink, with the catchlights added with a white gel pen.

The text pieces were hand-written on some scrap paper that had been sprayed with home-made glimmer mist (distress ink and Perfect Pearls in water) and the steam from the tea cup was made from a swirl stamped with sticky embossing powder with gold glitter added. The cup was made from a round teabag, inked, and stamped with another water droplets stamp, and some gilding wax added. The saucer was formed from another teabag, cut on the diagonal. The handle was also made from a teabag on the diagonal, rolled up and applied, like the rest, with gel medium. The tablecloth was a piece of transparent plastic chicken packaging painted with acrylics and stuck down with Pinflair gel glue, with a little gilding wax added.

I think that just about covers it. Time to put my feet up with a cuppa.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah, you've finally finished it! It looks amazing with all those wonderful textures and the additional shading. Your attention to detail is commendable! My problem is that I have very little patience - while I'm working on a piece, my mind is already on something else and I just want to finish it as quickly as possible by taking shortcuts. I'm hoping it's because everything is still quite new to me and I'm too excited like a puppy moving from one project to the other. Hopefully, I will calm down eventually and spend more time on quality projects rather than going for quantity!

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